The main bar of Milliways is mostly empty, and accordingly something approaching quiet. The door swings open to admit both a burst of miscellaneous chatter and a young brown-skinned woman wearing three parts of three different outfits, all of which have seen better days.

The woman stops abruptly at the threshold, blinks in shock for a moment, then turns to holler over her shoulder at someone not visible from the bar.

"Hancock! What in the fuck did you convince me to take, and why don't I remember it?!"

A scarred, noseless face appears behind her and mutely surveys the bar.

"This is not the Third Rail," the woman points out.

"Sweetheart, nothing I have does this," Hancock says. "And if it did, I wouldn't have it for long. Gotta be someone here with some answers." He ducks under her arm; she follows him, mildly exasperated but mostly curious, letting the door close behind them.

Both of them are armed and armored, the woman much more heavily, or at least visibly. She holds her shotgun casually, pointed off to the side but ready to bring it to bear if needed. Hancock, for his part, appears much less concerned with the prospect of imminent violence.

Cat takes point, since it doesn't seem like anyone else is going to, and it is her errand they're running, after all. She moves quickly but quietly, ducking behind the receptionist's desk and scanning the lobby before standing up and shrugging. "I don't think there's anybody in here. Probably they all came out and got blown up."

"Yeah," Cat says, but doesn't bother lowering her voice. "Most super mutants take stealth as some kind of personal insult, so if you walk in a room and there isn't any gunfire, there's probably no one there. Well, gunfire or yelling. The yelling is a constant." She rifles through the drawers in the desk, pockets a few bottlecaps, then moves on. "You can loot whatever you want out of here, finders keepers."

"That's not even the best part. I found some guy who was trying to reinvent credit cards - well, that's kind of generous, what he was really doing was scamming people - he tried to get me to give him, I forget what, two hundred caps? in exchange for a piece of metal with '200 caps' written on it."

Hancock laughs, apparently not having heard this story before. "When was that? You didn’t give it to him, did you?"

"No, of course not, guy practically had 'Take the Money and Run' written on his forehead. Besides, it was right after I left Sanctuary, I didn't have the caps even if I was that dumb."

"Why not?" Hancock says dryly. "We're only tromping through a building that probably has super mutants in it somewhere. What could go wrong?"

"Sanctuary is what we call this little settlement up to the northwest," Cat says, ignoring this. "It's the neighborhood I used to live in before the war. The development was Sanctuary Hills, the sign managed to survive somehow, Q.E.D. Sanctuary. I like it, it's kind of poetic."

"Yeah? Maybe we should head up that way after this." She snorts. "I bet Preston has another settlement that needs my help. What good is a militia if I'm always the one going out to clean up the messes, I ask you."

She's been poking at the receptionist's computer terminal as she talks; now she straightens from it, looking a little displeased. "Just company memos and crap. I think I'm done here, how about y'all?"

"I mean. Why would you use your nice militia to attack anything? That runs the risk of them being killed! And then you have problems! Much better to send some sole person who might succeed and benefits as well. Not my personal choice of tactics but it is in fact a win-win scenario for them."

He stands from his own search. "Yeah. I'm not finding anything interesting."

"Ah. See. There's your problem!" 'Sidora picks his way after Hancock, Epime and 'Metheus just ahead of them. "A bit of failure stops people thinking you're the answer to all their problems. Just make sure it's small failures. There's no prizes for suicidal failure..."

"I don't want to fuck over the actual people that need help, though," Cat says, bringing up the rear. "I'm just lazy, I'm not a horrible person. Even if it would be a lot easier if they'd all just come back to Sanctuary, but nooooo, 'This farm has been in my family for generations!' Generations my ass, I went to that park when the only thing growing there was pine trees."

"That was 200 years ago," Hancock points out. "Besides, you like it when Preston pats you on the head and says you did good."

"I have better aim than you."

"Yes ma'am," says Hancock, sounding not at all repentant in the slightest.

"I think growing up on military bases did a lot to mess with my perspective of what's important. Buildings mean very little, it's the people that are important. I'd move where it was safe in a flat second so long as I could take my people with me."

He laughs slightly. "To be fair, the military also did instil an ingrained response to superiors telling me I did a good job."